In labor

This process of moving through the PTSD is like giving birth.

For four and a half months during the autumn, my energy was focused on surviving, managing the shock, taking care of business, and moving myself cross-country. I was not in a place physically or emotionally where I could let down and process what was taking place. I had to keep moving forward, in addition to maintaining some extremely well-defined and narrowly circumscribed boundaries due to the difficult situations I found myself in with my family and the friends with whom I stayed after the hurricane (about which I have not gone into much detail on this blog.)

During that time period, I was very aware of what was happening, both internally and in the external world. I was very present to life in a way that I had never been before, and for an extended period of time. Very intensely going through it, as mindfully as possible.

However, I am now also aware of the extent to which I was having to block off a lot of feelings in order to be able to function adequately. Well, I was aware at the time that this was going on, and I understood that it had to be that way, but I can now see even more clearly what that involved. As I've said before, I have not yet been able to cry, and it's been six months now.

After moving into my new home on January 7, it's taken me almost two months to slow down. It's as if I'm having to relearn how to be in my own energy. To use a computer analogy, it's like I went through a defrag process, and now the parts are coming back together again ... ultimately better-functioning, but put together differently from what was there before.

Each week, I visit my therapist, and each week I can see the progress I've made. The first step was getting myself grounded; my body and mind had gotten so used to operating on adrenaline and functioning 24/7 in crisis mode, they had forgotten how to relax and just be normal. Some days I feel like a normal human being, living an ordinary human existence, and other days, I wonder if I'll ever be OK again.

This is hard to describe to someone who has not been through it. Fortunately (for me; not so much for him), my therapist is also a survivor of a natural disaster, so he has some understanding of what I'm experiencing.

In the past couple of weeks, I've been having dreams that indicate I'm in the process of bridging back to where I was when Katrina hit, and bringing myself forward. In therapeutic terms, I guess we'd call it a process of integration. That's a good sign, although it's a bit painful.

Like labor contractions, I've been cycling anger and grieving, and each time they come around, they're more intense. As with giving birth, it will happen. It has no choice. I'm doing my best to trust in this process and allow it to unfold, giving it as little resistance as possible, although at times that's very challenging.

January 2011